Jokertown Shuffle

"GIVE IT A REST, JJ, ALL RIGHT? THIS IS BATTLESHIP PLATE. ITS

The hand squeezed tighter. Flash gasped in pain, blackness flickered across his brain, the fire jet sputtered. "Go-ahead-and-squash me. But you're gonna-be Great-and Powerful-Turtle-soup."

The flame got brighter. The roar was like a blast furnace in full throat. Flash felt his chest being crushed, felt ribs give and squeak as they reached the breaking point.

He screamed. And put all the force of his pain and fury into the fire.

A tentacle of smoke ran up Turtle's nose. He froze. His control panel lit up like a crash scene on the Triboro Bridge, and the display from his forward vid pickup popped and died from the heat.

"Shit!" Turtle yelled. "Shit!"

A klaxon began its cat-in-a-stamping-mill yammer as the fire-suppression system-the same as the M-1 Abrams used, surplus production from FY 1988-flushed the interior with halon gas. He freaked.

The teke hand crushing the life from Jumpin' Jack Flash, Esquire, became sudden nothing.

Bullets hit the hull like hail as the policemen on the ground cut loose. It was too late.

The shell plummeted toward the peaked roofs of the neighborhood. Fear hit the Turtle like a cattle prod in the nuts. For a rare moment in his life, it was a focusing fear, a fear that overrode the reflex panic induced by heat-noiselight-smoke: fear of collision with the planet.

Like a man about to be hanged, Turtle found his mind wonderfully concentrated. The shell wobbled, sideslipped, knocked over a chimney with a sliding clatter of yellow brick, and rolled out to a flat hover just below rooftop level.

By that time, even the afterimage of Flash's blazing departure had faded from the watchers eyes.

For a moment, Blaise just lay there. He felt like a man drowning in rapids who had abruptly fetched up on the bank. He had been spinning, spinning in a roaring sunless void. Reaching out for something he could barely remember, reaching and feeling and desperately trying to force himself toward that familiar shard he sensed in a place without time and space and things.

Home. He was back in his body, his splendid body. Burning Sky, that was close! he thought.

Any other jumper would have been lost when he was bounced out of Mark Meadows's body during the phase-shift to JJ Flash. Would have spun forever, or until his consciousness had unraveled and diffused and gone, become one with ever-black. Only the supreme power of Blaise's mind had saved him. It was a test he alone could meet, and he had met it.

Exaltation filled him like a gush of semen: I have triumphed. I am Blaise!

Then he remembered what he had come for, and it turned to bile in his mouth. Meadows, his idiot blond brat, Durg, K.C., had escaped. He had failed. Blaise.

He rolled onto his belly and began to pound his fist against the floor.

Round sunset, this stretch of New Jersey was just like Disneyland, if your tastes ran to industrial. Car corpses strewed fields to either side of the road, inorganic fertilizer spread perhaps to foster the growth of the squat tanks and pipe tangles that hovered in the shimmering petrochemical haze of the horizon. The sun swelled like a huge red festering boil as it fell into the pooled gray-brown crud. It made World War III look like not such a bad idea.

K. C. Strange lay on her back on a dirty old blanket next to the station wagon they'd stashed a few blocks from Reeves and collected when they ditched the cop car and a grumpy, groggy Lieutenant Norwalk. Her breath was coming quick and shallow now, and pink froth bubbled her lips at each exhalation.

Sprout Meadows bent over her, trailing tears and long blond hair in the jumper's upturned face. "Don't die, pretty lady. Please." Her father stroked her hair with the hand that wasn't cradling K. C.'s head in his lap.

Durg stood a discreet distance down the road, keeping watch. A rose-gray Toyota Corolla had been parked there since yesterday, all full of blankets and nonperishable food and stuffed toys for Sprout, to ensure they began the crosscountry leg of their escape as clean as possible.

"Blaise did this?" he repeated wonderingly. "Blaise." K. C. repeated.

He shook his head. "He tried to do something to mejump me, I guess. Why, man? You were his-his lady. I was his friend!" He bit his lip. "It wasn't because we="

She laughed, winced. "He was through with me. He… hated you. Thought you were… threat. Tell you his dirty secret, babe… mine too. He has his grand-"

He pressed a finger to her lips. "Cool it. No time for that now" It was cold as hell out here on this long-forgotten county road, and his breath came in puffs of fog. He didn't notice. "We're away from the city. You gotta let us take you to a hospital. Nobody'll recognize you."

Her fingernails dug into his arm through the thin cotton of his Brooks Brothers shirt with a strength he didn't think she still had. "No! Ahh!"

She clung, eyes shut, until the pain spasm passed. "No," she said again, a whisper now. "Don't give me up to the Combine."

"Nobody's looking for you, babe. We'll tell 'em you got shot when somebody tried to rape you-"

She was shaking her head, slowly, as if each movement tore her further open. "No. I'm wanted. Hospitals, pigs… all part of the Combine. Too late, anyway-I'm… about out of air time." Her eyes came all the way open and looked way back in his. "I'd rather die free than live in a cage."

"You don't have to die."

"No," she said, and her voice was clear. " I don't."

She reached up and grabbed his head with both hands. Mark cried out in alarm as blood welled up around the edges of the tape Durg had wound around her chest, almost black in the orange dusklight. She pulled his face close to hers. Her eyes held his like pins through a butterfly's wings.

"I don't have to die." The blood-froth static was back now, and her voice was sinking under it. "I'm a… jumper, remember? I don't have to-go down with this ship. But I can't touch the alien. I won't touch the baby. And you-"

She forced her shoulders up off the mottled blanket, forced her mouth to his. " I love you, Mark," she said, falling back. Her eyes met his again. "Remember… me…"

Something passed behind his eyes as the light went out of hers. And then her blood was on his mouth, and she was dead.

The three shots were startlingly loud. They seemed to race clear to the horizon, where a thin scum of day's last light lay like self-luminous chemical waste, and rebound in a heartbeat.

The smell of gasoline from the station wagon's ruptured tank crowded Mark's nostrils as Durg slowly lowered the 10-mm. Mark held the highway flare before his skinny chest desperate-hard for just one moment, so the tendons stood out on the back of his hand. Then he pulled the tab. "Good-bye, K.C.," he said. "Rest easy, babe." He tossed the hissing magenta spark into the dark pool spreading below the vehicle.

It went up in a rush and a shout of yellow flame.

Mark stood there staring until the heat got so intense that even Sprout backed up, tugging her daddy's hand with gentle insistence. He stayed put. Durg took hold of the back of his shirt and drew him irresistibly back until his eyebrows were in no danger of crisping.

"It is done," the alien said. "We must leave before someone comes to investigate the fire."

They walked to the Toy, soles crunching quietly in the cinder berm.

Mark unlocked and opened the passenger door, then walked to the other side. Durg awaited him.

"The bike we stashed for you is still all right?" Mark asked.

The alien nodded. "You intend to leave me, then," he said flatly.

"We talked about this before, man. The three of us together are, like, just too distinctive."

The fine narrow head nodded. "Indeed. But later… may I not join you?"

Mark felt tears crowding his eyes again. I thought I'd run out of those.

"No, man. I'm sorry. I've put you through too much already."

"It is what I am made for."

"No. I can't. People can't own people, man. It doesn't work that way here." Like a man breaking through a membrane wall, Mark abruptly leaned forward and wrapped scarecrow arms briefly around Durg's shoulders. It was like hugging a statue. "Don't be so sad. It's freedom, man. It's the greatest thing in the world."

"It is for you."

Sprout hugged the Morakh. He smiled then, and hugged her back. She and Mark climbed into the car.

"Look, man," Mark said out the window, "maybe you should, like, try the Rox. I can't go back, not with Blaise there. But it's me Blaise is mad at, you were just like incidental. Talk to Bloat. He can help keep Blaise off your back if he tries to come down on you, and you can help him out like I was supposed to. Do that, yeah. The Rox."

"Do you so order me, lord?"

Compassion struggled with principle in Mark. As it sometimes should, compassion won. "Yes," he said, not meeting the lilac eyes. "I so order it."

Durg stepped back. "I thank you, lord."

"Good-bye, man, I'll never forget you."

"Nor I you," said Durg at-Morakh.

The Toyota rolled away through crackling gravel. Sprout leaned out the window and waved.

Mark looked back himself, once, as the tires took the cracked, neglected blacktop. For a flicker, he thought he saw something glistening on the alien's high cheek. But it had to be a trick of the light from K.C.'s pyre.

Sprout began to sing a song, something of her own, with words that made sense only to her. The road curved. The alien and the burning car were wiped from sight, and nothing remained but a glow in the sky that gradually faded as the Toyota pulled west for California and freedom. Eventually it was gone.

The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat

V

He was a lacuna in the fabric of the mindvoices. A vacuum. A null.

I'd never encountered a mindshield like this one. It was a hard round shell that I couldn't quite grasp. Tachyon's mind might have been that way once, but her mind powers were now weak and diffuse. Blaise's shields, as I knew, were erratic and poor, emotions dribbling around and underneath them. But this one… He had to be an ace, and I don't like aces. I had Kafka send Shroud, File, and Video to meet Charon at the docks.

Video came back a little ahead of the others with images that disturbed me: Our intruder was a man about five feet tall and oddly wide, moving too fast for a mere human and lifting the front end of a jeep as easily as someone picking up a pencil. "He says his name's Doug Morkle. Says he's a Takisian, being hunted by the Combine. The demo's supposed to prove to you that he is who he says he is. He wants refuge. He also wants to meet Blaise."

A little stab of fright shuddered through me, setting off an avalanche of bloatblack. They were walking in the front door now, the Takisian between Shroud and File, neither of whom looked to be so much guarding Morkle as hoping that if he made a move, he'd go for the other. Looking at Morkle, I had no doubt that he could disable both of them before they could move to stop him.

But what I couldn't do was read his thoughts. Their absence roared in my head. I didn't realized just how much I depended on that hearing-I felt like someone suddenly deaf. The Takisian, already a threat from a simple physical standpoint, was more frightening because of that.

"Why is he here, Governor?" Kafka whispered to me as Morkle came across the lobby. The man didn't glance at the lush tapestries, the gorgeous expanse of the Temptation, the new paint and gilt, or the stained-glass windows that were slowly transforming this place into a palace. None of that seemed to matter to him. He stared up at me. Pale eyes. Lavender eyes.

"I don't know," I answered Kafka.

His carapace rattled as he looked up at me, startled. "You don't know?…"

"It is not your concern, in any case," said Morkle, telling us that his hearing was as enhanced as his strength and agility. His words, coupled with the frustration of not being able to eavesdrop on his thoughts, made me angry.

"You're on the Rox now," I snapped back. "Everything on the Rox is my business."

Morkle only gazed at me flatly, like a snake. His nose wrinkled. I thought maybe that was disgust, the smell of the bloatblack, but I didn't know. "It you want to stay on the Rox, Morkle," I continued, "you'd better learn-" I stopped. Another, less complete hole was moving through the mindvoices, very close by. "Damn it."

"Governor?" Kafka asked.

"Blaise. He's here. This might be trouble."

Tachyon's grandson threw back the lobby doors. Molly Bolt and Red came in with him, all three armed with automatic weapons. They fanned out as they entered, making distance between them. Their weapons were aimed at Morkle, who made no move at all.

Blaise was radiating a curious mixture of fear and pleasure. "Durg at-Morakh," he said. "Why are you here? I hope you didn't come here to finish what was started with Meadows. I'd hate to have to kill you."

"Blaise-" I began, but he didn't even glance at me. The Takisian spoke in a flat, emotionless voice. "Morakh serve," he said. "You have Takisian blood; you lived when I tried to kill you. I came to see if you would have need of me."

He did something then I hadn't expected. He went to his knees, prostrating himself before Blaise.

Blaise's mind gleamed with sudden triumph. The look he shot at me then was terrifying in its contempt. Mine. My beautiful weapon…, I caught, and then Blaise's paranoia made him pay attention to his mindshields, and the thoughts were cut off. "Let's go, Durg at-Morakh bo Zabb Vayawandsa," he said, and gestured to the other jumpers.

"Blaise." He turned. "I wasn't done," I told him.

He just looked at me. I didn't want to know his thoughts at all. I could see it all, there in his eyes. You are done. Half of your jokers are hooked on rapture; more and more are coming here every day, and all the supplies that feed and house them are bought with the money Prime gives you. We have the rapture, we can give the jokers the nat bodies they want. We can jump the rich or not. Jokers like you are eating at the jumpers' trough. You remember how the Rox used to be? Do you remember jokers starving and living in tumbledown shacks? Is that the kingdom you want to govern, Bloat?

I knew. I knew when Blaise walked from the lobby with Durg that any chance I had to rescue Tachyon had just dwindled to almost nothing. I knew that Blaise's grip on the Rox would become stronger and more harsh. I knew that my own influence would be damaged, maybe fatally.

I also knew that if I ordered my people to fire, to mow them down in cold blood and take control back again, they might not do it. I could hear their thoughts. The blue tinge of rapture would make them hesitate, the remembrance of hunger and overcrowding, the hope for a new, normal body… Hell, we were rich now. Everyone had food. Everyone had all the toys jumper money could buy. No one wanted to give that up.

I didn't know what they'd do or what would happen. I don't hurt jokers. I won't hurt jokers.

"You may leave," I told Blaise. "I'm done with you now" It was a poor exit line. It was also the only one I had.

The pond outside the Administration Building-which was again the Crystal Castle in my dream-was frozen over with a late hard freeze. From the castle's glass expanse, from all the sparkling spires and flying buttresses, long icicles hung.

A penguin wearing a funnel hat was skating on the pond.

"Bosch was just like you, y'know," it said, and its voice was just like Robert Wanda's, the art teacher at my high school. I was outside, too, though I was still Bloat. The morning snowfall had blanketed me in thick damp snow. Jokers were sledding down my slopes in sleds made from everything from garbage-can lids to sheet metal. One joker was shaped just like an American Flyer and was carrying Elmo, Peanut, and Kafka down my sides. They laughed and shouted so that I could hardly hear the penguin.

"What do you mean?" I asked it.

The penguin did a triple axel in front of me and came to a dead stop, showering me with ice flakes. "Well," it said. "Bosch's world was also marked by huge, terrible upheavals. The years of his life were marked by pestilence and unrest: economic, social, political, religious. The writers and artists of his time reflected a nearly universal pessimism. A sour lot, all of them, obsessed with death and violence and decay." The penguin began skating backward, effortlessly. "Like you, big guy," it said.

The penguin turned and glided away under a low bridge. Above it, crossing the pond on the bridge, Tachyon was being beaten by a large toad creature with the face of Blaise who brandished a hugh wooden penis. Durg, looking like a thing of shadow, walked behind them.

Tachyon was wearing a dress but otherwise looked like the Tachyon of old, not Kelly. I could hear the wailing torment in his mind and regretted once more that I hadn't told Meadows about her. Maybe, maybe he could have gotten her out.

Not now.

"That's right, flagellate yourself with the guilt. It's good for you."

"You can read my mind?" I asked the penguin. "What there is of it." It cackled loudly.

I could not read the penguin's thoughts at all. The penguin was a vacuum in the world, an emptiness. Like Durg.

"'All that happens can be performed by demons,"' the penguin quoted. It winked. "Thomas Aquinas."

"Is that supposed to be significant?"

"Could be. Could mean that if you want to rule in a place most of the nats think of as hell, you'd better get ruthless, asshole." The penguin pointed across the bay. There I could see Manhattan, but there were no skyscrapers, just millions upon millions of people like maggots on a piece of rotting meat in July. They were fighting, quarreling, killing. Above them, demons with disfigured hateful faces spat fire on them, pissed great floods of acid, or shat streams of boiling pitch. I could hear the faint screams and smell the stench of burning flesh on the wind.' The sky was blood-red above them.

"Alchemy and witchcraft were real stuff then," the penguin intoned. I could feel the agony of the people washing over me now, a relentless, thundering, screaming tide of it. I wanted to hold my hands over my ears to shut it out.

"Devils pranced, incubi and succubi prowled the night," the penguin continued. "Monsters lurked in the dark forests."

"Like jokers in the city," I murmured as if answering some damn refrain in church. With the words, I could see a vision of my people in Jokertown, flitting like angry ghosts from shadow to shadow, many of their lips tinted with the blue of rapture. The nats turned their faces away in fear and loathing.

"Bosch's world was a world for youth. Old age began at thirty. By the time you were twelve, you were already doing your life's work." The penguin was spinning in front of me on one foot. "Only the young can be innocently cruel or unintentionally evil. Like a child, Bosch viewed the world through symbols and icons-so did everyone else. When you put on a priest's vestments, you were the church. A king was not just the ruler-he was the country."

"I am the Rox."

"So you say," the penguin replied. "Is that why so many of your jokers are looking to Blaise and Prime as the Rox's leaders? Is that why so many jokers are offering to pay the jumpers to transfer them to a nat body? You're losing it, fatboy. It's all dripping through your useless little fingers." The penguin's tone was so mocking that I reared up like a giant cobra, ready to slam my entire weight down on the fucking bird. Sledding jokers screamed as I tossed them aside like fragile toys. "I am the ruler here!" I shouted. "There is no Rox without me!"

"The human condition in Bosch's world was caught up in pessimism, folly, and evil," the penguin shrugged. "Bosch snared the visions in his fevered imagination and made them real. Can you make your dreams real, fatso?"

I "Yes!" I was shouting, but the heat from the Manhattan fires was stifling now and very close; the flames seemed to mule my roar. The snow was melting everywhere; the ice thinned underneath the penguin as it laughed at me. The toad-Blaise had stopped his torment of Tachyon to look at me with evil, calculating eyes.

Suddenly, the ice of the pond cracked with a sound like breaking glass. The penguin silently disappeared into deep black water. It waved at me as it did so, unperturbed.

I woke. I was where I'd always been since I'd come here, in the lobby. The building was dark and silent. In front of me, I could just make out the larger darkness that was the Temptation. The room was cold on my face, though I felt nothing past there.

I wondered if it was snowing outside.

After the penguin dream, I slept, and woke again a few hours later. I'm not sure what time it was, but it was still pitch black in the lobby. I knew something was wrong, though I thought it was just another dream. But it's not like I could pinch myself to see if I was awake…

I guess I'm joking because I don't know how to say any of this. It's all still so unreal… as strange as the nightmares I'd had the last two weeks. But it was real. I can't fucking deny that. Every damn bit of it was real…

I felt faint proddings against Bloat's Wall and the first whisper of unknown minds. A massed hatred. A group fear. A common abhorrence. Nats, all of them.

I turned my attention to the Wall. I couldn't tell exactly how many there were-maybe fifty or sixty, from the reports in the Times later. Most of the minds I sensed were scared, too, frightened of what they were about to face, shivering because they'd heard about my Wall and the jumpers and the rogue aces and jokers. They'd heard that the Rox was hell given life. Individually, none of them would have made it through. My Wall would have taken their paranoia and used it as a weapon against them. The Wall would have turned their bowels to ice water, set their teeth chattering loose in their jaws, and scattered them back to the city in a panic.

I was hearing all kinds of voices jumbled together: the kids know some- I hear that the bay's -they're just kids. Man, thing's up with Daddy full of skeletons, all I got a teenager no even the little one. around Ellis. People older than them. The

God, I hope Nancy's who didn't make it past lieutenant can say not having a bad night the wall. They kill "shoot to kill" all he with them them, the jokers do, wants, but I don't send 'em down for fish know if I can turn a food gun on some pimplefaced kid like my Kevin-

Yes. I laughed. All of them I could have turned if they'd hit the Wall one by one.

But they weren't alone. That was the problem. That's what made me doubt myself, really it was. They were a big group, all coming at once, maybe in nine or ten boats and two, three choppers, hitting my Wall from all sides simultaneously.

They'd taken one other precaution too. In each boat, in each chopper, there was at least one mind so angry, so dedicated, so goddamn determined to kick some joker ass that I could feel the Wall stretching and thinning like a rubber band.

Amy's fucking son no goddam joker's you want to stop the was there in that gonna stop me. I'll whole wild card problem bank when they show them my forty- just wipe 'em out. jumped the woman. five caliber wild card. Real simple. Just take

They gunned down Shove it right – down the whole frigging my own nephew. Man, their slimy joker useless lot of them and it's gonna give me throats bury 'em pleasure to pay that back

I grated out Kafka's name. I felt the joker's mind shaking off his own dreams. He asked me if I was having a nightmare again. I told him one thing only. "They're coming."

Kafka didn't answer, but I knew he understood. He snapped his fingers at my guards, making sure they were alert, then scuttled away. A few moments later, I heard the low growling of a siren from the roof of the building. The wail throbbed along the girders and walls; I could feel it shivering everywhere in my body, like a howling banshee.

In the darkness, I tried to push back with my Wall, tried to bring it under conscious control and focus its strength where it was being penetrated. I think it almost worked too.

But I'd already made my mistake. I just didn't know it. It sounds like something Latham would throw back at me, but, man, I'd never had to run a battle before except when I played D amp;D. Maybe I should have known better.

But I am just a kid.

I could have handled it myself. I still think that. Hey, they were just a bunch of cops and park rangers. They weren't really trained for this; they'd never worked together.

They didn't even really hate us-they were just doing what they'd been told to do: Go get the joker squatters and teenage delinquents off Ellis.

I could've_ sent them back. Yes. Hell, they were just plain people, like my dad or Uncle George or Mr. Niemann next door back in Brooklyn.

I know from the news reports that two of the boats and one of the choppers did turn tail. I did that much at least. But whoever was in charge had been at least a little smart. They'd made some plans to get through the Wall. The pilots were those with a strong sense of duty and a violent antijoker prejudice, the ones already boiling mad at the way the Rox thumbed its collective nose at the "normal" world. The pilots were all guarded by like souls, so that even if the cops and rangers panicked, they couldn't overpower those in charge. None of the weapons, from what I understand, were to be given out until the Wall had been breached.

Even so… Even so, I don't think more than one or two boats would have made it. The papers said several cops jumped overboard. Three rangers leapt from their copters into the bay. If only one or two made it past the Wall, they would've had to turn back simply 'cause there wouldn't have been enough of them.

It would have been a bloodless rout. Except that I'd already been stupid.

Kafka's alarm had roused the island. Lights snapped on in the Administration Building; I found myself staring full at the Bosch triptych. Jokers were rushing all over the lobby floor and along the high balcony. There was lots of yelling, internal and external, and all of us could hear the sullen thut-thut-thut of the helicopters.

The nats were still circling, though, still hitting the Wall and retreating again, like wasps butting against a glass door. They weren't moving in toward the Rox anymore. They couldn't get past my Wall. I could feel the paranoia and fear rising among them, like some infection. A few more minutes, and they would have turned tail and run back to New York or Jersey or wherever they'd come from.

I wasn't paying too much attention to the voices of the Rox. Look, no one can make sense of hundreds of people all yammering at you at once. No, you have to shut some of it out, or you just go crazy. I'd let the Rox fade to a background static while my powers stalked the Wall.

Another mistake.

I felt it happen behind my mental back, sorta.

"No!" I screamed, startling everyone around me. Someone jumped back at my shout and nearly knocked over the Temptation. It wobbled and finally steadied. "No!"

The mindvoice of the park ranger guarding the pilot was suddenly gone. There was only a silence where it had been, and then a new voice was there, one I knew: the jumper called Red. I could hear his thoughts as he spoke to them… safety off "Welcome" magazine in "to the" and let 'er rip "Rox, assholes!"

The mindvoices in the copter came at me all overdubbed and confused.

Christ just let me get turn this damn chop- hate leaving Angie any back to my family. per around, if you ask way. God, it'd be

You can HAVE this me. Let 'em have stink- good to just be back crap. I-what the ing Ellis if they want home with her, snug hell's with Johnson? it. Hey, what's with gling. Huh? "Welcome-"

"Welcome to the Johnson? He's looking Lord Jesus, he just took

Rox"? Oh God, John- pretty damn weird the safety off son! NO! Please God don't

I screamed again. Screamed with the sudden death of the mindvoices and their wailing pain, screamed with the nats I knew were dying. Screamed because it was all so useless and unnecessary.

Outside, the jumped chopper lost control in a wail of shrieking metal. It exploded before it hit the water. I saw the glare wash over the buildings of the Rox.

I've never heard so many people die at once.

I heard the other nat squads slowly realize that some thing was wrong. I felt their outrage and horror as the carnage echoed over their headsets and radios. I felt their fury.

Their sudden surge of will.

My Wall fell in tatters, shredded by nat hatred. They poured through.

I was staring at the Temptation again, sightlessly. Everyone in the building was gaping at me. I knew they were waiting for Governor Bloat to do something, but I couldn't think.

I could hear them. I could hear everything-as the two choppers touched down in cold tornadoes of dust and vomited their loads, as a boat full of rangers and cops hit the shores of my Rox and scrambled out. I heard screaming and the percussive bark of gunfire. I witnessed the assault through their minds.

It didn't last long. I'd like to claim that it was something I did or that the jokers did, but it really wasn't. I'd already told Kafka to take one of the walkie-talkies, thinking I'd direct him where the nats were. But even as the squad of jokers ran to the compound where the choppers had landed, the jumpers, directed by Blaise, continued to attack. They were taking the cops, making them turn and fire on their own. The nats quickly found that they couldn't trust their friends. It wasn't the damn kids or the ugly jokers who were the enemy here in the Rox. It was themselves.

They died.

I felt them die. I watched the scenes through their minds, through their thoughts.

Leo caught a glimpse of himself in his buddy's visor. He was thinking that they looked like a bunch of damn robots behind the helmets. He even thought it was funny. He was starting to say so to Tom, his partner, when Tom shuddered. He looks so strange… Then Tom whipped around his weapon before Leo could move. Tom was shooting at anything and everything, just holding the trigger down and spraying. Leo saw a line of slugs rip open his stomach and spill purple guts into his cupped hands.

He was dying. Cold mud pressed against his face, but in his mind was another image. He was holding a baby wrapped in a Muppet Babies blanket. In his thoughts, I could see him holding the kid up to his stubbled cheek. He kissed her.

"Good night, darling. Daddy'll be back in the morning, I promise. You be good." He replayed that kiss again and again, crying as his life pumped out from the hole in his chest and the vision spiraled away into the darkness of unconsciousness. "Daddy loves you. Hell be back. I promise. I love you."

A park ranger stood on open ground near the docks. I could sense the hot suppressor of the CAR-15 he cradled against his chest. He looked down at the girl he'd just killed.

Just a kid, just a fucking kid, Jesus, not much older than me… Then his thoughts moved away as he sensed someone coming up behind him. it's Captain McGinnis. Only I could hear this captain's thoughts, too, and I knew that it wasn't McGinnis but Molly Bolt, and the only thing in her mind was a bloodlust.

Blaise's mind was loud in the turmoil, his mindshields carelessly down. He thought it was funny. He thought it was hilarious how Durg could kill them so easily.

The battle was a rout. I could hear it. The nats realized that their strategy had been blown to hell and that they were likely to die here. Their retreat was short and bloody and complete. They fled the Rox, not even dragging away the dead and wounded they found in their path. They piled back into the choppers and the boat.

Blaise didn't want to let them go. He wanted to kill them all. I shouted to Kafka through the walkie-talkie, knowing Blaise would be listening. I told him to let them go.

Let them go.

Blaise didn't like it. But… Durg said something to him that I could not hear, and Blaise just watched as the choppers wheeled into the gray sky, as the boat cast lines from the dock and careened away from the Rox.

I don't know what I would have done if Blaise had defied me. Nothing, probably.

I could hear the wounded and the dying. Ahh, those I heard very well. Even though jumpers and jokers were shouting and dancing in an impromptu victory celebration all around, I didn't share any of their happiness.

I just stared straight ahead, at the Temptation and its bizarre images. I looked at the burning city in the deep background of the painting and the soldiers spilling over the landscape.

I had felt nats die for the first time. A helpless voyeur, I watched them, and it hurt. It hurt just as if they were jokers. They had families and friends, and they weren't any better or worse than my own people. Not really. Maybe, maybe they could have opened fire on the jokers here. Jokers are ugly and misshapen and not even human, if you know what I mean. But they would've had trouble with the jumpers, with the teenagers who look, after all, just like their own kids or nieces and nephews or maybe even themselves a few years back.

Worse, I knew I could've taken care of this myself without any bloodshed if I'd been a little smarter, if I'd just shut up and let the Wall do its work.

I looked at the Temptation and begged it to give some solution. So tell me, is this what victory's supposed to feel like? Is it always such a sour, rotten fruit? Does it always leave you feeling so guilty?

St. Anthony, tormented by his own demons, didn't give me an answer.

Lovers